admin
Hollywood films concerning the end of the world abound, from Armageddon to the Day After Tomorrow.
If a worldwide apocalypse is imminent, what may be the cause of the extinction of all life on Earth?
Such a catastrophe could be brought on by a nuclear war, a huge asteroid impact, a wandering black hole, the emergence of killer robots, or the reversal of our planet’s magnetic field.
Many of these may sound unrealistic, but the threat is now very real because the Doomsday Clock is set at a record 90 seconds to midnight this year, and scientists are warning that there is a larger risk than ever before to humanity’s continuing survival.
How, therefore, may these disastrous prospects materialize? MailOnline examines.
1. A massive asteroid strike
There is a good likelihood that a space rock-related apocalypse will occur again because it put an end to the dinosaurs’ dominion 66 million years ago.
In what is now the Gulf of Mexico, the Chicxulub asteroid collided with a shallow sea, causing a gigantic tsunami and a massive cloud of soot and dust that destroyed 75% of the planet’s animal and plant life and caused climate change.
According to astronomers, one of these enormous asteroids should strike Earth around every 100 million years.
Although that would put us on track for another extinction-level event in around 30 million years, it is unlikely to be as dangerous as Chicxulub given ongoing technological advancements.
NASA successfully completed the first-ever planetary defense test for humans last year, which involved deflecting an asteroid far out in space.
A 520-foot (160-meter) space rock called Dimorphos collided with the US space agency’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft at 14,000 miles per hour, changing its orbit.
Although Dimorphos posed no threat to mankind, the mission’s success indicates that we would already have a strong chance of avoiding any massive asteroid that was headed toward Earth.
In addition to the enhanced surveillance, there is very little chance of a significant collision because NASA is currently unaware of any comets or asteroids that are headed straight for Earth.
Overall, it seems unlikely that humanity will suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs, even if popular movies like Deep Impact and Armageddon warn of the cataclysmic threats posed by asteroids.
2. Robots that kill
The threats presented by the development of artificial intelligence (AI) systems have received a lot of attention lately.
A Silicon Valley civil war has broken out over whether more should be done to regulate the quickly changing technology in the wake of the success of chatbots like ChatGPT, which have taken the globe by storm since their release at the end of last year.
With Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak on one side of the debate and Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft founder Bill Gates on the other, the world’s brightest minds are divided on whether artificial intelligence is a good or negative thing for humanity.
When over 1,000 industry titans signed a statement earlier this year demanding a halt to the “dangerous race” to develop AI, the acrimonious dispute spilled into the public eye.
Before humans lose control of the technology and run the possibility of being wiped out by robots, they claimed, immediate action was required.
‘Godfather of AI’ Geoffrey Hinton resigned from Google last week, citing concerns that’scary’ chatbots would soon surpass humans in intelligence, further escalating the dispute.
He warned that although they can now store more broad knowledge than the human brain, it will only be a matter of time until AI surpasses humans in reasoning as well.
At this point, he continued, “bad actors” like Russian President Vladimir Putin could program robots to “get more power” by using AI for “bad things.”
Concerns regarding AI have been raised by other experts before Dr. Hinton.
While the UN Secretary-General has previously advocated for a prohibition on “machines that have the power to kill,” renowned MIT researcher Max Tegmark cautioned in 2018 that humans could one day become enslaved by the intelligent computers they construct.
Antonio Guterres’ intervention was prompted by concerns that robots that can choose and strike targets without human assistance will soon be developed as a result of AI advancements.
Scientists and activists have cautioned that such robots might threaten human very survival, but they also constitute the ‘third revolution’ in combat after gunpowder and nuclear weapons.
Even if science fiction movies like “The Terminator” and “I, Robot” feature terrifying killing machines nearby, the likelihood that they will trigger the end of the world is extremely concerning.
The singularity—the moment when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence—is approaching, according to many computer scientists, so we will soon know if robots will benefit or harm humans.
3. A supervolcano
Supervolcanoes have the capacity to bring about our species’ fiery annihilation, and some people believe they pose the greatest natural threat to human survival.
The good news is that the 20 known supervolcanoes on Earth only rarely erupt, about once per 100,000 years.
However, when they do, the climate and ecosystem of our planet are severely impacted.
Among the most well-known in the world, Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park is still very active and has erupted three times in the last 2.1 million years.
Other examples are the considerably smaller Phlegraean Fields near Naples, Italy; Lake Taupo in New Zealand; and Lake Toba in Indonesia.
Experts have described how it could cause the end of the planet if one erupted today.
Before a “titanic eruption” that threw ash and poisonous gasses aloft and spewed lava up to 40 miles (64 km) distant, there would be a series of strong earthquakes as magma raced to the Earth’s surface.
The latter would be the greatest danger to life as we know it.
The gases, which would be released over several days, would cause terrible lung damage in addition to hurtling 15 miles (24 km) high and engulfing much of the United States in darkness.
According to scientists, this spread of volcanic ash would also affect the world’s population since it would lower temperatures, make farming more difficult, and ultimately result in global hunger.
However, they also warn that this is “very unlikely to happen,” so it’s not a reason to worry.
4. Foreigners
The main concern concerning aliens is that, should they be able to reach Earth, their species would probably be so technologically sophisticated that we would be helpless against any attempts to wipe us out.
The author of End Times: A Brief Guide To The End Of The World, Bryan Walsh, claims that such a situation “would not be like Independence Day or any of these movies,” but rather would resemble the US military “taking on a primitive tribe.”
Given that there are around 200 billion galaxies in the universe and that over 5,000 exoplanets have been found in our galaxy to date, the majority of specialists concur that there is a high probability that extraterrestrial life exists somewhere in the cosmos.
It’s just a game of numbers. According to space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock, “it is probability.”
The question of whether any of this would be intelligent is more controversial.
It would be reasonable to hope that isn’t the case given the aforementioned possibility.
“If you look at history, contact between humans and less intelligent organisms has often been disastrous from their point of view, and encounters between civilizations with advanced versus primitive technologies have gone badly for the less advanced,” as the late great physicist Professor Stephen Hawking once cautioned.
In light of what humanity’s history has taught us about the potential dangers of actively reaching out in the form of radio broadcasts, he expressed support for efforts to locate aliens by listening.
But it hasn’t deterred scientists.
According to information released last year, scientists intend to send a radio transmission with Earth’s location far into space in the hopes that an extraterrestrial civilization may eventually receive and comprehend it.
Known as the Beacon in the Galaxy (BITG) message, it is basically an upgraded version of the well-known Arecibo message, which was delivered for the same reason in 1974.
For the benefit of humanity, let’s hope that those aliens are kinder than most analysts predict if they ever respond.
5. The sun devoured
You might say that’s hardly the most thrilling way for the world to end. demolished by the same thing that sustains us.
However, there’s a good likelihood that the sun will swallow up Mercury, Venus, and maybe Earth when its fuel runs out.
Scientists said last week that they had spotted a star eating a planet 12,000 light-years away in our own Milky Way galaxy, giving them a peek of what this would look like, even though it won’t happen for about five billion years.
The scorching, Jupiter-sized globe would have been drawn into the dying star’s atmosphere and ultimately ingested in its core, according to scientists.
According to experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “we are seeing the future of the Earth.”
When the sun was swallowing up the Earth, “some other civilization watching us from 10,000 light-years away would see the sun suddenly brighten as it ejects some material, then form dust around it, before settling back to what it was.”
Although this won’t happen for around five billion years, scientists revealed last week they had seen a glimpse of what it would look like after spotting a star swallowing a planet 12,000 light-years away in our own Milky Way galaxy.
Scientists said the hot, Jupiter-sized world would have been pulled into the dying star’s atmosphere and then consumed in its core.
‘We are seeing the future of the Earth,’ researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said.
‘If some other civilisation was observing us from 10,000 light-years away while the sun was engulfing the Earth, they would see the sun suddenly brighten as it ejects some material, then form dust around it, before settling back to what it was.’
6. Earth’s magnetic field reversal
The North and South poles of Earth have historically reversed every 200,000–300,000 years.
But since the previous one occurred some 780,000 years ago, many experts think that another reversal might be on the horizon.
Although this may seem unsettling, it undoubtedly seems odd to think that it would mean the end of our species in a time when GPS is more common than compasses.
But maybe we can learn something from our forebears.
According to research, the Neanderthals might have been exterminated by catastrophic climate change caused by a brief reversal of the magnetic poles 42,000 years ago.
The Laschamps excursion, which occurred at the end of the Last Glacial Period, was a brief magnetic movement of the poles that did not result in a complete reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field.
When a full flip occurs, the Earth’s magnetic field gradually diminishes to nearly nothing before resurfacing with the poles inverted around a century later.
The fact that our magnetic field’s intensity has dropped by roughly 5% in the last century is concerning.
This is important because the magnetic field shields Earth’s ozone layer from cosmic rays and particle storms by diverting them away from the sun.
Fortunately, a recent study provided confirmation that the likelihood of the Earth’s magnetic poles flipping anytime soon is quite low.
After piecing together 9,000-year-old data on Earth’s geomagnetic field intensity, researchers from Lund University said there is no indication that a reversal is imminent.
It’s time to exhale with relief.
7. The pandemic
When the Covid-19 epidemic struck in 2020, we got a horrifying preview of what this would look like.
The virus, which is estimated to have killed 20 million people globally, was only stopped when the quick discovery of vaccinations helped shield people from fatalities and severe disease.
Even while COVID was extremely deadly at its height, a pandemic that would eventually cause extinction would be even worse.
An apocalyptic disease would need to be very contagious (like the common cold), nearly always fatal (like rabies), incurable (like Ebola), and have a lengthy incubation period (like HIV).
There would be a huge death toll if a single virus had these terrible characteristics.
The World Health Organization (WHO) did not formally proclaim COVID-19 to be a “global health emergency” until last week.
However, the good news was accompanied by a sobering reminder.
“This is the history of pandemics, and we fully expect that this virus will continue to transmit,” stated Dr. Mike Ryan of the WHO’s health emergency division.
Decades passed before the 1918 pandemic virus’s last symptoms vanished.
“Pandemias usually come to an end when the next one starts.”
8. A nomadic black hole
Even though the first image of a black hole was recently taken, scientists still have a lot to learn about these enigmatic objects.
Experts refer to the black hole, which is three million times the size of the Earth and measures 24 billion miles (40 billion kilometers) across, as “a monster.” It was discovered in the far-off galaxy M87.
To our knowledge, there are no such objects in the close vicinity of Earth, however it is commonly known that a similar supermassive black hole, known as Sagittarius A*, is located at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
In fact, it was just last month that the nearest known black hole to Earth was discovered.
The European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite provided the data that allowed for the detection of Gaia BH1 and Gaia BH2, which are only 1,560 and 3,800 light-years from Earth, respectively.
We shouldn’t be concerned about them, but what if a black hole did happen to meander toward us?
Even if it may sound unrealistic, the concept is not unthinkable because so-called “recoiled” black holes have been seen menacingly moving through space, much like renegade planets.
A ‘runaway’ black hole was the ‘invisible monster on the loose’ that NASA warned of just last month.
As it crashes into the gas in front of it, the object, which is 7.5 billion light-years away from Earth, is currently causing star formation.
Although it is far from us, a black hole the size of the moon may be disastrous if it were to travel through our solar system.
Earth would also have little chance as light cannot escape black holes.
Our planet would either be torn apart or potentially flung into a different region of the universe when it was drawn toward the object’s event horizon.
Let’s hope for the latter, even though such a scenario is highly implausible.
9. A nuclear conflict
For many years, the world community has been terrified of a catastrophic nuclear conflict.
The possibility of such destruction never seems far off, as evidenced by the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the unpredictability of Kim Jong-Un’s North Korea.
Because of this danger, some estimates place the likelihood of a nuclear conflict occurring within the next century at about 10%.
Whether the war caused a “nuclear winter”—a buildup of smoke high in the atmosphere that would block the sun’s rays, causing temperatures to drop below freezing and maybe destroying the ozone layer—would determine whether it had an extinction-level effect.
The bombs would need to ignite enormous firebombs that could raise the dust into the atmosphere for this to occur.
The worldwide food supply would probably break down as a result of the fallout, increasing the likelihood of widespread hunger and state collapse.
10. Warming of the planet
Animals and plants are always going extinct; it’s a fact of existence. Approximately 98% of all living things that have ever called our planet home are now extinct.
In actuality, there have been five major mass extinction events that have altered the course of life on Earth throughout the last 500 million years.
A sixth is already underway, according to some experts, who attribute it to the looming threat of global warming.
According to experts, unless nations take swift and decisive action to stop global warming, human-caused climate change could raise average world temperatures by 7.2°F (4°C).
Despite how serious the warning may appear, there is a chance that the warming will be considerably worse and reach 10.8°F (6°C).
According to study, this would have the greatest effect on poorer nations, rendering them uninhabitable and causing famines, mass exodus, and fatalities.
Scientists from Harvard Medical School have also asserted that a warmer globe may facilitate the spread of infectious diseases by extending the spectrum of tropical pathogens and offering a more conducive environment for parasites.
In terms of complete destruction, if global temperatures continue to rise, a runaway greenhouse effect may result, which at the most extreme would make Earth more like Venus, where the average daytime high is 900°F (482°C).
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings